Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Sunday:
Lihue, Kauai – 86
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 88 (record for Sunday – 92 in 1979)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 83
Molokai airport – 84
Kahului airport, Maui – 85
Kona airport 85
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 84
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Sunday evening:
Port Allen, Kauai – 86
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Haleakala Crater – 46 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 41 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Sunday evening:
0.02 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.35 Kahana, Oahu
0.02 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.17 Kahoolawe
0.02 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.58 Pahala, Big Island
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with this Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. Finally, here's a Looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,500 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two web cams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset too…depending upon weather conditions.
Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here. Here's a tropical cyclone tracking map for the eastern and central Pacific.
Aloha Paragraphs
Big September Full Moon
The trade winds will continue blowing in the light to moderately strong range through Tuesday…then increase by mid-week. Glancing at this weather map, we find high pressure systems to the northeast and northwest of our islands. The forecast continues to suggest that our winds will be active now well into the new week.
Our trade winds will remain active well into the future…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions Sunday evening:
13 Lihue, Kauai – ENE
23 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
29 Molokai – NE
20 Kahoolawe – ESE
31 Kapalua, Maui – NE
07 Lanai – WNW
27 Upolu airport, Big Island – NE
We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Sunday night. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find scattered clouds in all directions…mostly over the ocean to our southwest through northeast at the time of this writing. We can use this looping satellite image to see the low clouds moving along in the easterly trade wind flow…with thunderstorms far to our southwest and southeast, and high clouds well offshore to the west and northwest of Hawaii. Checking out this looping radar image we see just a few showers around…falling mostly over the ocean offshore from the islands.
Sunset Commentary: The high pressure ridge remains relatively close to the islands Sunday evening. Not far to the north of this ridge remains our early season cold front. This front is having a difficult time pulling away towards the north and northeast, allowing the ridge to migrate further northward slowly in its wake. This will keep the trade wind speeds in the light to moderately strong realms through Tuesday…then increasing a notch Wednesday onwards.
As for precipitation, there will be some, although not very much for the time being. Anytime that the trade winds are blowing, we usually see a corresponding few passing showers, along our windward sides. The forecast models, based on various parameters, suggest that rainfall might increase slightly Monday through Wednesday. As usual this time of year, the windward sides will pick up the most precipitation.
Our local beaches will have active surf, the largest of which will be along our south and north facing shores. A late winter storm in the southern hemisphere late last week, generated a large south swell. This will be impacting our leeward beaches, although will be gradually dropping in size as we head into the new week ahead. The big storm that has been spinning in the Gulf of Alaska last week, has sent a moderately large north-northwest swell in our direction too. It will keep our north and west shores full of breaking waves…although gradually dropping over the next few days too.
This past Friday evening I went to see a new film called Conan The Barbarian, starring Jason Momoa and Rachel Nichols…among many others. I wasn't going to see this film, as I thought it would be too whatever, although two people at work told me that it wasn't over the top in terms of killing. I was a little anxious, but decided to take a chance. The synopsis: the savage Cimmerian warrior is the only hope of saving the nations of Hyboria from an encroaching reign of supernatural evil. The critics certainly weren't thrilled, as they gave it a very luke warm C grade, while the viewers provided an improved B rating. I was glad that it wasn't too much, and was pretty well entertained. It certainly isn't a film for everyone, although you hearty folks will appreciated the action. Actually, there was a fairly equal spread of women and men in the theater, or people moaning from the violence. Considering what kind of a film it was, I would give a B grade, a firm B as a matter of fact. Here's the trailer just in case you are the slightest bit interested…which many of you probably won't be!
Here in Kula, Maui at 5pm HST Sunday evening, skies were clear, with an air temperature of 76.3F degrees. It was another lovely day here in paradise, as it has been all week. The trade winds will continue blowing, although not many showers will ride in on them. The surf will remain larger than normal, and then begin falling in size as we get into the new work week ahead had a relaxing day at home. I didn't do much, which was fine with me. I made a nice pasta sauce this afternoon, consisting of a red onion, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms, hot peppers out of the garden, a can of diced tomatoes, and a small can of wild caught sardines in water. I cook pasta each evening during this upcoming work week, and put some nice grating cheese on top, with a few capers. Yum that sounds good, I can hardly wait. This evening for dinner, I'll have a nice fresh slice of Ahi Tuna, with steamed potatoes and broccoli. ~~~ Ok, this is it Sunday's narrative, and will catch up with you again early Monday morning. I hope you have a great Sunday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: A team of leading marine scientists from around the world is recommending an end to most commercial fishing in the deep sea, Earth's largest ecosystem. Instead, they recommend fishing in more productive waters nearer to consumers. In a comprehensive analysis published online in the journal Marine Policy, marine ecologists, fisheries biologists, economists, mathematicians and international policy experts show that, with rare exceptions, deep-sea fisheries are unsustainable.
The "Sustainability of deep-sea fisheries" study, funded mainly by the Lenfest Ocean Program, comes just before the UN decides whether to continue allowing deep-sea fishing in international waters, which the UN calls "high seas." Life is mostly sparse in the oceans' cold depths, far from the sunlight that fuels photosynthesis.
Food is scarce and life processes happen at a slower pace than near the sea surface. Some deep-sea fishes live more than a century; some deep-sea corals can live more than 4,000 years. When bottom trawlers rip life from the depths, animals adapted to life in deep-sea time can't repopulate on human time scales.
Powerful fishing technologies are overwhelming them. "The deep sea is the world's worst place to catch fish" says marine ecologist Dr. Elliott Norse, the study's lead author and President of the Marine Conservation Institute in Bellevue, Washington USA. "Deep-sea fishes are especially vulnerable because they can't repopulate quickly after being overfished."
The deep sea provides less than 1% of the world's seafood. But fishing there, especially bottom trawling, causes profound, lasting damage to fishes and life on the seafloor, such as deep-sea corals, these experts say. Since the 1970s, when coastal fisheries were overexploited, commercial fishing fleets have moved further offshore and into deeper waters.
Some now fish more than a mile deep. "Because these fish grow slowly and live a long time, they can only sustain a very low rate of fishing," says author Dr. Selina Heppell, a marine fisheries ecologist at Oregon State University. "On the high seas, it is impossible to control or even monitor the amount of fishing that is occurring.
The effects on local populations can be devastating." The authors document the collapse of many deep-sea fishes around the world, including sharks and orange roughy. Other commercially caught deep-sea fishes include grenadiers (rattails) and blue ling. "Fifty years ago no one ate orange roughy," said author Dr. Daniel Pauly, a fisheries biologist with the University of British Columbia (UBC).
"In fact, it used to be called slimehead, indicating no one ever thought we would eat it. But as we've overfished our coastal species, that changed and so did the name." Orange roughy take 30 years to reach sexual maturity and can live 125 years. Compared with most coastal fishes, they live in slow-motion.
Unfortunately for them and the deep-sea corals they live among, they can no longer hide from industrial fishing. "Fishing for orange roughy started in New Zealand and grew rapidly through the 1980s and 1990s. However, most of the fisheries were overexploited, and catch levels have either been dramatically reduced or the fisheries closed all together," says author Dr. Malcolm Clark, a New Zealand-based fisheries biologist.
"The same pattern has been repeated in Australia, Namibia, the SW Indian Ocean, Chile and Ireland. It demonstrates how vulnerable deep-sea fish species can be to overfishing and potential stock collapse." There are very few exceptions to unsustainable deep-sea fisheries around the world. One is the Azores fishery for black scabbardfish.
There the Portuguese government has banned bottom trawling, which overfished black scabbardfish elsewhere. Azores fish are caught sustainably with hook and line gear from small boats. In most deep sea-fisheries, however, trawlers fish outside of nations' 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones, outside of effective government control.
"Deep-sea fisheries can be sustainable only where the fish population grows quickly and fisheries are small-scale and use gear that don't destroy fish habitat," said Dr. Norse. "With slow-growing fish, there's economic incentive to kill them all and reinvest the money elsewhere to get a higher return-on-investment.
Killing off life in the deep sea one place after another isn't good for our oceans or economies. Boom-and-bust fisheries are more like mining than fishing," Dr. Norse said. The lawlessness of the high seas adds to overfishing in the deep.
So do nations' fisheries subsidies. High seas trawlers receive some $162 million each year in government handouts, which amounts to 25% the value of the fleet's catch, according to Dr. Rashid Sumaila, an author and fisheries economist at UBC.
The authors of this Marine Policy paper say that the best policy would be to end economically wasteful deep-sea fisheries, redirect subsidies to help displaced fishermen and rebuild fish populations in productive waters closer to ports and markets, places far more conducive to sustainable fisheries.
"Instead of overfishing the Earth's biggest but most vulnerable ecosystem, nations should recover fish populations and fish in more productive coastal waters," says Dr. Norse. "Deep-sea fishes are in deep trouble almost everywhere we look. Governments shouldn't be wasting taxpayers' money by keeping unsustainable fisheries afloat."
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